A life as a-
by bhut
Summary: The sun shone warmly down onto Connor, as he woke up as an ichthyosaur. Post S3 AU.


**A life as a-**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

The sun shone dimly but warmly all the same, making Connor Temple feel ticklish as open. Slowly – very, very slowly – he felt his awareness return and blinked away the sunlight, until once again he could recognize the swarms of fish and the tall outcroppings of coral reef through the mass of water.

Say wha-?

Instinctively, Connor reacted. He twitched, feeling the muscles jump-start like a car on a stolen battery, and swam upwards as fast as he could, until he finally burst through the water's surface like a torpedo and fell back into it with an equally loud splash.

Connor blinked once more. It felt weird, and, moreover, he felt more comfortable underwater than above it, even if he did need to breathe air…

Connor froze. He did feel weird now that he could think rationally about it: his neck felt particu larly stiff, his legs – particularly puny, and his butt did not feel right either. What was going on?

As Connor tried to make sense of his surroundings, he thought that he noticed something move towards him through the water at a great speed…

_Shark!_

Connor did not understand how he understood and realized that – instead he just stopped think ing and fled deeply into the tangles of the coral reefs, for safety… at least for a while.

Several hours passed. On the other hand, maybe they were minutes. Anyways, as the shark cir cled around the reef (and Connor was certain that that was a shark, albeit with strange-looking hornlets at the back of its head and with a tail of a slightly different shape than the usual), and the air supply that he had breathed in ran out, he realized that he wasn't a fish, even if he felt like one; instead, he was an air-breather, a reptile.

"I am an ichthyosaur," Connor muttered in his head. "A primeval fish-lizard that died out by early Cretaceous from unknown causes… Will I get to see those causes, or will this shark do this for me?"

"Miss Maitland, I do not appreciate being thought-of so demeaningly even if my brain _is_ cur rently less complex that yours at the moment," another voice echoed in his head.

"Hey, I am not Abby, I'm Connor!" Connor snapped hotly, before he realized who was speaking, "Helen?"

"Connor Temple," Helen's mental voice sounded about as thrilled as Connor's spirit fell. "Oh no. That's not good."

"Um, it's not?" Connor edged upwards, hoping to try to steal another breath of air before fleeing from Helen Cutter if things went somewhat wrong. "Why… besides the obvious reason?"

"Because odds are that she's around here as well, and I don't want to seek the next time anomaly without attempting at least a token search for her," Helen's voice was still flat and not excited to say the least. "I don't suppose you have any inkling at all, do you?"

"No," Connor responded automatically and immediately tried to backpedal, "I mean, what I am supposed to have an idea about?"

"How you two died."

"What? We did not die-" Connor trailed away. "Wait a second. Do you mean that _you_'ve died?"

"Yes," Helen's voice was even flatter and emotionless than before. "Danny Quinn managed to stop me. I fell. So, how did you two die?"

"We didn't die!" Connor protested hotly. "We found a time anomaly manifestation device – yours, I suppose – and manifested a time anomaly, and went through it, and-" he trailed away, suddenly aware that he had no idea or memory as to what happened next.

"Yes, that was pretty much what Abby told me too, just before I almost ate her," Helen said with some emotion finally coming back into her voice. "Fortunately, I didn't, and we were able to find a time anomaly, and-"

"Say what?" Connor interrupted her, "You almost _ate_ her?"

Helen did the mental equivalent of a sign. "Both of us were primitive dinosaurs… a fact that, sadly, made things easier then. Now, for a contrast, you're an air breather, and I'm a fish, and Christine Johnson might be around, and-"

"Say what?"

"Oh, just be careful, Mr. Temple. Remember, that although you are relatively big, you can still be eaten, and do not forget to call out for your girlfriend, yes? I'll be doing the same thing, I promise."

"Wait, what-" Connor began to speak up, but Helen flicked her shark's tail and vanished abruptly in the blue depth of the Jurassic seas.

"Thank you," Connor muttered, trying to go for sarcastic, but sounding rather whiny instead.

Helen did not answer, and the air supply in his lungs was very low, so Connor raced to the sur face and snuck another _deep_ mouthful of air. And then-

Then the hunger hit. Apparently, the ichthyosaur that was him (well, something along those lines) had not fed for quite a while and now was starving for food instead – and, sadly, Connor had no idea as to how ichthyosaurs fed or what did they feed, exactly.

Oh, he was theoretically aware that the prehistoric 'fish-lizards' fed on equally prehistoric fish and squid, but in practice it also meant that Connor was not too sure that he'll manage it on his own: the ichthyosaur looked too much like a dolphin to be a potentially successful independent hunter, unlike a shark.

A shark… That gave Connor an idea, one that he would rather squash than act upon, but another pang of hunger made him feel even more desperate. "Um, Helen?" he desperately – well, not ex actly desperately, but close enough – reached out to her. "I don't suppose that you can drive some fish or prehistoric squid or something in my direction, can you?"

There was a silence, and Connor was beginning to think that Helen has gone out of range of their telepathy or whatever, when a reply came:

"Excuse me? Can't you hunt by yourself? Your girlfriend managed to do that for several weeks before we ran into each other."

"And did she do it alone or with the help of the other primitive dinosaurs of that time?" Connor asked, hoping that he sounded sufficiently shrewd to be impressive. "'Cause the first dinosaurs of the Triassic period were group hunters – just like the ichthyosaurs, I should add, and-"

"Fine, I see what I can do," Helen's voice was less acidic than Connor expected her to sound. "But all the same, try to do something yourself, like your girlfriend did, would you?"

Connor felt his cheeks grow warm from embarrassment even though reptile bodies were not sup posed to work that way. "OK, I will," he said sheepishly, even as he began to scan his surround ings for anything edible. "And I think that I will re-start calling-out to her too. Abby! Abby!" so calling out, he swam forth to hunt.

As far as people went, Connor Temple was not stupid; rather, he was naïve, perhaps even child ishly so. And as a naïve person, he did tend to make some rather stupid mistakes, and his some what absent-minded nature did not make things any easier. His aloud calls for Abby were, actu ally, too far away to effectively to be heard by her, but someone else heard them instead.

A pair of massive jaws, terminating in a too-large head on a too-small neck, armed with dozens of jagged teeth and topped by a pair of extremely sensitive nostrils swung in his direction and a pair of cold reptilian eyes widened in recognition. Then, this recognition sparked a series of re sponses inside a very physically large nervous system, and two pairs of giant flippers began to move through the waters.

Christine Johnson was out for revenge once more, and this time she was sure that she'd get it.

The fish came unexpectedly, bursting like a swarm of silvery streaks from the blue gloom – bursting so quickly, that Connor was only able to snap at the tail of one of them before they van ished once more.

"Mr. Temple, may I suggest that you try _harder_," Helen Cutter's voice sounded about as gentle and understanding as a piece of sandpaper or a shark's skin. "For when we will run into your girlfriend, you probably will not want to tell her the truth, now will you?"

"Please, shut up, and let me try again," Connor muttered, whirled around and began to pursue the fish, only vague aware of Helen – a grayish-blue, potentially lethal shadow in the grayish-blue seawater swimming somewhere below him. Instead, most of Connor's attention was focused on the other, bony fish that fled directly away from him and his sonar directly towards the reef, the shallower waters of the coast, from which he had come earlier.

_There!_

One of the fish seemed a bit slower, a bit more tired than the rest, and Connor capitalized on this: he gathered his now somewhat-failing strength into a knot of power (located in his tail, for it seemed to be his new main mean of locomotion, as opposed to his flippers), and lunged for wards, snapping his long jaws shut.

Something brushed past his left side, and he instinctively whirled around, snapping his jaws shut once again, and again, and again, each time swallowing a fish... that were already somewhat stunned.

"Wha- Helen, what did you do?" he finally managed.

"Tried a maneuver that was surprisingly effective," Helen admitted, sounding rather unlike her self for a change. "Anyways, can we re-start looking for Miss Maitland _now_?"

"Why, Helen, I didn't know you cared!"

For a few moments, the ichthyosaur and the prehistoric shark just stared at each other and then they rotated towards the direction of the reef. "Abby? Is that you?" Connor tried mentally whis per.

"Yeah, it's me," Abby said slowly. "Connor, I know that that sounds strange, but _what_ are you, 'cause I am a dinosaur, and-"

"Um, I am a fully aquatic reptile – _not_ a dinosaur – and Helen's a shark, so that's a problem, I think," Connor said quietly. "Um, what kind of dinosaur, by the way?"

"A meat-eating one," Abby said dryly, aware that for Connor, the dinosaurs were something semi-orgasmic, "but that's not the point. Even without Christine Johnson doing her top predator bit-"

A wave of extreme rage interrupted Abby's monologue. "Run!" Helen's voice sounded shrilly into her mind. "It's a pliosaur-!"

Instinctively, Connor lunged upwards, feeling something cool and massive almost smash into his tail and lower body. That, however, he ignored as he burst from the sea's surface once more and saw a nearby reef and a large, brownish-colored dinosaur standing on top of it, wildly gesticu lating. Abby?!

The next moment Connor fell into the sea once again, and he saw a huge head of a much-bigger sea reptile reaching out with snapping jaws for a much smaller shark. Instinctively, he slammed into that head, and was 'rewarded' with the head swatting back into him, causing him to careen through the water head over tail fluke, when suddenly there was a roar, and a spike of some body's mental pain caused him to stop… almost causing Helen to smash into him. There was a trail of blood going through the water from Helen's upper fin, and her eyes looked somehow dif ferent, in a bad way.

"Guys!" Abby's voice reached through the clouds of Connor's panic. "The time anomaly is in the shallows behind me! Can you reach them?"

Connor and Helen looked at each other, a shark and an ichthyosaur, and then they whirled and fled towards Abby's reef, aware of the sea giant coming towards them from the left.

For the third time, Connor picked up momentum and leapt upwards, only partially aware of the fact that Helen was imitating him for a change. From the left, he could see the pliosaur also be ginning to lunge upwards, its neck leaking blood, but its jaws still strong, but the next moment he leapt.

That leap carried him cleanly over Abby's reef…and the next moment Connor found himself face first in the shallow waters beyond it, waters too shallow for him to swim successfully in, even though the time anomaly was within his sights, twinkling mockingly before his fading vi sion, for Connor felt like a beached dolphin would, choking under his own weight…

"Mr. Temple? Never thought I would go like _this_ – with you for company," Helen Cutter's voice sounded weakly in his mind, as he felt her thrashing next to him.

"I don't think so," Abby's voice, by contrast, sounded cool and confident. "Connor, wait on, I'll deal with Dr. Cutter first, okay?"

Connor did not reply – he just watched the brownish dinosaur grab the weakly struggle shark by the back with its forelimbs and jaws and half-drag half-carry it into the time anomaly.

And then Abby returned for him.

With her throat somewhat torn by Helen Cutter's sharp spines and one her shoulders broken by being smashed against a reef, Christine Johnson was not in the best of physical conditions; in fact, she was downright dying, half-drowning, half-suffocating under her weight in the shallow coastal waters – but that won't finish her off – that job went to the gathering sharks and flying reptiles.

"How did things went so wrong?" Christine silently mused to herself. "They had Temple with them, and he is useless! Doesn't matter, I'll finish them next time… next time… next time…"

The great pliosaur shuddered and lay still in the Jurassic waters, its body now just inanimate flesh. Christine Johnson would get her enemies – the next time.

_End_


End file.
